APOLLO Hark to the words of the prophet, oracular words of Apollo, Touching the shivery strife in which heroes are facing each other. Loudly they shout in the battle, and fast-flying words are their weapons ; Many a blow while the hisses of conflict are ebbing and flowing This way and that shall be dealt on the crest of the plowtail stubborn ; Yet when the hook-taloned vulture the grasshopper grips in his clutches, Then shall the rainbearing crows make an end of their cawing forever : Vict’ry shall go to the mules, and the ass will rejoice in his offspring ! ZEUS 
What are you guffawing about, Momus? Surely
there is nothing to laugh at in the situation we are
facing. Stop, hang you! You'll choke yourself to
death with your laughing.
 MOMUS 
How can I, Zeus, when the oracle is so clear and
manifest ?
 ZEUS 
Well then, suppose you tell us what in the world
it means.
 MOMUS 
It is quite manifest, so that we shan’t need a
Themistocles. See p. 121, note. . The prophecy says as plainly as you

 

please that this fellow is a humbug and that you who
believe in him are pack-asses and mules, without
as much sense as grasshoppers.

 HERACLES 
As for me, father, though I am but an alien I.shall
not hesitate to say what I think. When they have
met and are disputing, if Timocles gets the better
of it, let’s allow the discussion about us to proceed ;
but if it turns out at all adversely, in that case, if
you approve, I myself will at once shake the porch
and throw it down on Damis, so that he may not
affront us, confound him!
 ZEUS 
In the name of Heracles! that was a loutish,
horribly Boeotian thing you said, Heracles, to involve
so many honest men in the destruction of a single
rascal, and the porch too, with its Marathon and
Miltiades and Cynegirus! The porch in question was the Painted Porch, with its fresco representing the battle of Marathon. If they should collapse
how could the orators orate any more? They would
be robbed of their principal topic for speeches. Compare The Orators’ Coach (Rhet. Praec.), 18. 
Moreover, although while you were alive you could
no doubt have done something of the sort, since you
have become a god you have found out, I suppose,
that only the Fates can do such things; and that we
have no part in them.
 HERACLES 
So when I killed the lion or the Hydra, the
Fates did it through my agency?
 ZEUS 
Why, certainly!

 

 HERACLES 
And now, in case anyone affronts me by robbing
my temple or upsetting my image, can’t I exterminate him unless it was long ago settled that way
by the Fates?
 ZEUS 
No, not by any means.
 HERACLES 
Then hear me frankly, Zeus, for as the comic
poet puts it,
 I'm but a boor and call a spade a spade. 
If that is the way things stand here with you, I
shall say good-bye forever to the honours here
and the odour of sacrifice and the blood of victims
and go down to Hell, where with my bow uncascd
I can at least frighten the ghosts of the animals I
have slain.
 ZEUS 
Bravo! testimony from the inside, as the saying
goes. Really you would have done us a great
service if you had given Damis a hint to say
that.